


your eyes go black (electric blue)

by skvadern



Series: if we make it through the night everybody's gonna hear us [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, MAG039 - Infestation, Other, Sasha James Lives, Sasha is a BAMF, creepy monster flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:02:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21578005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skvadern/pseuds/skvadern
Summary: “Hello,” Michael says, in that ever-so-slightly off-key voice. “You’re about to die.”Sasha meets two monsters in Artefact Storage instead of one. Only one of them wants to kill her. Probably.
Relationships: Sasha James/Michael
Series: if we make it through the night everybody's gonna hear us [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555078
Comments: 40
Kudos: 258





	your eyes go black (electric blue)

**Author's Note:**

> sasha lives bc i can do that i have that power
> 
> title from not human by elegant slims

“Jon! Jon, I think there’s someone here!” Heartbeat kicking up, faster than she knew it even could, Sasha begins to edge deeper into the shelves. Stupid, she knows, to follow the flickering motion she’s _sure_ she spotted, but God, she has to know. To see it, just once, meet its eyes even if it’s the last thing she does –

A noise behind her and she spins, tape recorder raised to, what, bludgeon the tall distorted shape in front of her? It finds the idea as laughable as she does, judging by its echoing giggle.

Michael steps into the dim green puddle of the emergency light, and Sasha can’t help but catch her breath. At least the first time they met, it had done its best to seem human; it’s not bothering now. There are joints where there emphatically should not be joints, the curls that crown its head seem to loop back in on each other, and its fucking _hands_ …

Sasha very deliberately stops looking at its hands.

“Hello,” it says, in that ever-so-slightly off-key voice. “You’re about to die.”

Pulse hammering in every part of her body, she manages to ask “Is that a threat?”

It tilts its head at her; the angle makes her vaguely sick. “I said I wanted to be friends, remember?”

“You also said you didn’t care if I lived or died.”

It hums in agreement, and she suddenly wonders if she just argued herself into getting murdered. She’s just about to take a step back from it when she hears movement again. Behind her.

Sasha freezes. She should turn, should look, abruptly doesn’t want to. “There’s something else here, isn’t there?” she whispers, and when Michael nods, she has to lock her knees to keep standing. _You’re about to die_. Only _it_ isn’t going to be what kills her after all.

Movement, again, still a ways off into the shelves. Getting closer. Honing in.

She locks eyes with Michael, ignoring the pulsing _wrongness_ of it, the large part of her that wants to look away and then curl up and gibber. It might just be the light, but its pupils look like spirals, slowly rotating inwards, dragging at her gaze.

“You said you want to be friends,” she tells it, with all the strength she doesn’t feel, “so be my friend. _Help me_.”

It regards her for the longest moment, face perfectly still apart from those slowly twisting pupils. The noises get slowly closer. Sasha holds her breath.

Finally, Michael straightens to an impossible height. “It wants to be hidden, hates to be seen. But it very much wants to see you.” It reaches for her as it passes, brushes a terrible hand through her hair; almost tender for all that when it comes away its fingers are wreathed in sliced-off curls. “Stay hidden, little assistant. I will deal with this.”

 _No, don’t_ , a stupid little part of her cries out, _it’ll get you too_. But Michael isn’t prey, not like her; it stalks forward like a true predator.

From behind a shelf in front of them, a pair of eyes flicker. The reflection of the green lights in them is impossibly eerie. Then Michael pounces.

Sasha presses herself back into the shelves, choking down rising vomit. The _sounds_ the two monsters make as they fight; wet tearing and nails-on-blackboard scraping, Michael’s spiralling laugh and the furious yell of something that is not human, never was, _could_ _never possibly be_. It paralyses her, muscles locking in protest of the horrifying unreality of her situation. And she’d thought nothing more could scare her today, she thinks dizzily.

Suddenly one awful sound rises from all the other awful sounds – Michael is screaming, and it is definitely a scream of pain. The _thing_ it’s fighting snarls in delight, and Sasha presses her hands over her mouth to keep the scream in. As bad as Michael is, she knows she wants it to win, _needs_ it to.

Michael screams again, rage and frustration and agony that sends splinters into Sasha’s brain, and she shuts her eyes against it. Then she snaps them open again.

What had Michael said? _It hates to be seen_.

She sprints to the next shelf over, forcing herself not to look at the battling monsters. Her eyes are finally adjusting to the light, and when she spots what she’s looking for, she throws herself at it and snatches it up with a relief she’d never expected to feel about an artefact.

It’s the cursed camera, the one that looks perfectly harmless except for how it’s driven five people she knows of to suicide. Except for how everyone whose picture is taken with it spends every waking moment afterwards sure they’re being watched, eyes boring into the back of their head everywhere they go.

It’s horrible. It’s perfect.

Sasha runs towards the fight, her fear a living presence in her, inhabiting every nerve. She doesn’t look directly at them, knows she couldn’t bear to, just fumbles the on switch, flicks off the lens cover, pops up the flash and aims for the screams.

Through the camera, she sees something that must be Michael look up from the floor, spot her coming and yank itself behind a shelf, out of her way. The _thing_ stalking towards it, elongated and bloody, doesn’t see her.

But she sees it.

With a vicious squeeze, she takes its picture.

The monster _screeches_. Caught in the brilliant flare of the flash, it writhes and smokes as if set aflame. It stumbles away from her, towards the darkness beyond the lights. Towards the shelf where Michael is waiting.

It leaps out like something from the most hellish nature documentary, slamming the monster into the shelf behind it so hard Sasha can hear the crash of falling objects. When the thing opens its awful, too-wide mouth to snap and bite, Michael shoves its entire warped hand down its throat, dreadful glee splashed over its twisted face.

When it withdraws its arm, terrible fingers slathered in something that can’t be blood, the monster drops limp to the floor, twitching and keening. Michael stands over it, smile twisting up and up and up at the corners, before stepping away and waving to Sasha.

“Come on, little assistant,” it sing-songs, and God, if she’d thought its voice was inhuman before…”Time to get your hands dirty.”

Trembling so hard she can barely stand, Sasha raises the camera again. Michael steps smoothly out of the way, and she presses the button again. Again, and again, as the monster that would have made a meal of her burns and screams and flails and shrivels and dies and dies and –

And then she’s crouched on the floor, back against a shelf, and Michael is gently pulling the camera from her clenched hands, and Artefact Storage is quiet once more.

“Shhhhhh” it’s saying, something tender and proud in its unnatural voice. “All done now, there we go. You did so well, so clever, little assistant.” Its hands are in her hair again – they feel a little more human now, or at least, like something inhuman that’s pressed and squeezed itself into a human shape. She leans into them helplessly and takes deep breaths.

Eventually, she’s steady enough to brush away the tears drying stickily on her face. She tries to speak and coughs, chokes, tries again. “That’s, that’s twice now.”

“Hmm?” it asks, hands still busy in her hair.

“Twice I’ve saved you from some other monster.”

“Are we counting the hive?” it asks, “because we shouldn’t. I was never in any danger there.”

“But you were this time,” she presses, exhaustion making her bold. “You were losing that fight. ‘I will deal with this’ my arse.”

For a second, Sasha is blankly sure she’s offended it, that it’s going to kill her after all. But then it laughs, properly laughs, loud and unrestrained. The noise echoes and dopplers round her head, and she clamps hands over her ears in self-defence. Suddenly it’s right up in her space, sharp hands cradling her face.

“Oh Sasha,” it murmurs, so close to her, breath smelling like something she can’t name, “I am very, very glad I didn’t leave you to die. What a fascinating thing you are.”

She opens her mouth to say…something, God knows what, but then she hears the scream.

Or screams, maybe. Millions of things that don’t have mouths crying out in agony as they shrivel and die. She dives back into the safe dark between her knees, brain flinching from one too many horrible noises in far too short a space of time.

When it stops, she looks up to meet Michael’s eyes. This time, they look more human, though there’s still something odd happening around the pupils. “That was the worms, right? Please, _please_ tell me that was the worms all dying horribly.”

It smiles at her, warped around the edges, but still oddly comforting. Must be the day she’s had. “Probably. At least, I’m sure your archivist wouldn’t make a noise like that.”

She shudders at that, but when it unfolds itself to standing and offers a deceptively normal-looking hand, she takes it and lets it pull her up. For such a skinny thing, it’s impossibly strong, and she doesn’t need to take any of her own weight until she’s standing, swaying but upright.

When she manages to stabilise herself, Michael lets her hand fall. The part of her that’s sick with adrenaline and exhaustion wants to reach for it, pull it back; she only barely stops herself.

“You should get back to your friends, Sasha,” it says, and brushes a last few curls out of her eyes. When one of them comes away sliced off and wrapped around its finger, it smiles at the sad-looking little thing. As she watches, it carefully unwinds her hair from its finger, and wraps it around its too-bony wrist.

The bracelet of hair shouldn’t stay on, but it does. Sasha…has no idea how she feels about that.

Before she can say anything - _What was that monster, why did you help me, what do you_ _want_ , _why the fuck did you just steal my **hair**_ – it steps backwards. At first, she thinks it’s walking into the wall, but then she sees the open door, the door that was definitely never there before. She can’t see into it past Michael. It waves to her, and then the door shuts and sinks into the wall, and the monster who just saved her life is gone.

Sasha presses her face into her hands and takes deep breaths until the urge to scream Michael’s name passes. Then, stumbling on weakened legs, she picks her way over fallen artefacts towards the real door, the door that will get her out of this place and back to her friends. Her friends who are hopefully not dead. God, she hopes they’re not dead.

She doesn’t look at the place where the other monster fell and died. That is not something she needs to see, not again.

On her way out, she spots the tape recorder, lying where she dropped it to sprint for the cursed camera. Amazingly, it still appears to be running. Smiling to herself, Sasha scoops it up. Assuming he survived, Jon will definitely want to hear this.

**Author's Note:**

> if yall r wondering what i think sasha and not!sasha look like, [jaegerfcker420’s insane tarot card](https://jaegerfker420.tumblr.com/post/181426881743/bgm-of-my-laptop-screaming-complaints-why-did-i) is probably the closest. their not!sasha is fucking chilling i love it
> 
> this will (hopefully) be the start of a jonsashamichael alternate s2, jampacked with paranoia, dumbassery, Making Connections, two slightly fucked up humans falling in trust and then accidentally love, and creepy monster flirting. i know this because [my demon brain made me make a playlist for it](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gMCGcMgKXhJ1MmMKdqifp?si=P8sCi3bgRbSqAIibNlPAuA)


End file.
